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Javier Milei backtracks on $4.4B memecoin after 'insiders' pocket $87M

322 points by techlover14159 2y ago

29athrowaway 2y ago
Cryptocurrencies are volatile "investments".
impossiblefork 2y ago
Surely all cryptocurrencies are memecoins. There's very little debt in these things, so that it isn't a source of value, and there are many popular systems, from Bitcoin to Ethereum, so isn't any that can be said to be somehow special.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  If Trump (or whoever) goes on social media to promote Bitcoin, it'll probably pump 5%-10%. And if it falls, it'll fall roughly back down to where it was. If he goes on to promote some unknown shitcoin, said coin could easily pump 1000%, and fall harder.
  - BobbyJo 2y ago
    I don't get the point you're trying to make?
    - santoshalper 2y ago
      That legitimate stores of value are typically not that simple to manipulate.
      - hhh1111 2y ago
        [dead]
      - UncleEntity 2y ago
        Like real estate?
      - BobbyJo 2y ago
        You are equating legitimacy with liquidity, and the that isn't necessarily true. Liquidity is necessary, and a good marker, but not sufficient.
        cwalv 2y ago
        > You are equating legitimacy with liquidity, and the that isn't necessarily true. How so? Liquidity is a measurement of how easy it is to trade, and if it's easy to trade there are many people/entities that believe it's "legitimate" currency, or they wouldn't trade for it
        BobbyJo 2y ago
        Parent said "store of value" not "currency". Liquidity is probably sufficient for a currency (depending on the features of the liquidity), but it is not sufficient for a store of value.
        cwalv 2y ago
        Fair enough; store of value additionally requires restricted supply so that the value isn't debased. But in the context of this thread, that just strengthens the argument that 'Bitcoin is different'.
        BobbyJo 2y ago
        It also requires a value proposition that doesn't depend on the current zeitgeist, among other things. Society changes, and stores of value need to exist outside that change, lest they be left behind with the norms and dogmas. This is where I personally think bitcoin fails.
        cwalv 2y ago
        > Society changes, and stores of value need to exist outside that change I completely agree. I don't think this is different from saying the store of value needs to stay liquid tho. Bitcoin is currently very illiquid compared to many things, but there's no reason to think it's liquidity will decrease, and based on trends and first principles of what makes something a good 'money', significant reason to believe liquidity will continue to increase
  - UncleEntity 2y ago
    I don't even have a problem with some unwitting celebrity promoting this kind of stuff. They aren't subject matter experts and I imagine they have grifters targeting them all the time. What I do take issue with is this keeps happening because there's a lot of money to be made off transaction fees so nobody looks too hard into how fraudulent any of these memecoins are before allowing them on the trading platforms. Admittedly, I don't know how the trading system works so maybe the platforms taking a cut of the profits from the blatantly fraudulent activity are victims too? Crying all the way to the bank I suppose...
  - dashundchen 2y ago
    He did a rugpull in a shitcoin right before his inauguration and likely pulled megaprofit out of some bag holders. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trumps-meme-coin-made-nearly-100-million-trading-fees-small-traders-lost-money-2025-02-03/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trumps-meme-coin-... Any other administration this would have been a huge scandal but when we're in an avalanche of corruption I guess it can be missed.
    - marssaxman 2y ago
      I think the point was that it gave his supporters a quasi-legal way to donate money while skirting campaign finance regulation, making the trumpcoin itself not so much a unit of currency as a receipt - a proof of loyalty.
- topranks 2y ago
  Crypto adherents seem to have given up on any other narrative this time yeah. Scammers gonna scam. Suckers gonna lose (including the suckers who fancy themselves as scammers but don’t realise it’s a rigged game).
  - EGreg 2y ago
    I am a “crypto adherent” who champions decentralized networks and byzantine-fault-tolerant protocols, and I have been using strongly pushing for the original narrative of trustless smart contracts cutting out the middleman. I think there are many use cases for it. Before you knock it, look at the following: https://intercoin.app/investors.pdf https://intercoin.app/investors.pdf https://intercoin.app/currencies.pdf https://intercoin.app/currencies.pdf Or if you want to see actual open source solutions, coded, see here: https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications I know some people will knee-jerk downvote this. But actually look into the substance, first. TLDR: I have been speaking against “HODL” and zero-sum games just for “number go up” nonsense, and been building solutions for maximum utility.
    - XMPPwocky 2y ago
      I think your pitch would be significantly stronger if the resources you linked didn't largely revolve around "What if Snoop Dogg had his own currency?" I'm not ... completely unable to be persuaded that there are use cases for cryptocurrency. But "Ashton Kutcher should have Aston Kutchercoin, and develop some sort of referral-based pyramid-shaped scheme with it for his fans" is... what is that?
      - EGreg 2y ago
        That's... 1) A way to fill unsold seats at venues, and always have sold-out events 2) A way to reward his members for spreading his message and bringing more people 3) A way to turn his audience into an army of promoters 4) A way to be independent of banks, and accept global payments 5) A way to have a global online movement that becomes bigger than Ashton Kutcher himself... having subcommunities be empowered to get together and form their own meetups, see it happen around the world, if they get large then Ashton and his crew can come and do a rock concert there It's great for political campaigns and many movements as well. We did it for Yang's 2020 campaign for example, with "Yang Gangs", that was very early days in 2020
- lmm 2y ago
  The likes of Bitcoin or Ethereum aren't really "memes" in the modern sense, at least no more than any fiat currency is.
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    Ordinary currencies have value due to the enormous debt in it. If people fail to obtain units of the currency, they default on obligations that have much greater value than the value of the all the cash in the currency. Thus in an ordinary currency the incentive isn't to ignore it, or to sell, but to hoard it so that people can't obtain the money to pay their loans in order to create a crisis so that they can obtain a large fraction of the value of collateral. This is prevented by central banks. If you try to execute this corner, you will drive up prices, so they will start printing money. So Bitcoin and Ethereum, both remain memes. Fiat currencies have non-mem value due to the debt.
    - csomar 2y ago
      Most people don't realize that governments can't just "print" currencies and the few that do (ie: Turkey, Argentina, etc...) have chronic hyperinflation. The US went a bit loose with supply and it already came back biting and still to this day struggling with the higher interest. The government does constantly devalue the currency, though. It does it at an imperceptible pace to not scare the chickens and make business viable. But that's the most they can collect from this system. Anything more and they blow the whole monetary system away.
      - impossiblefork 2y ago
        Yes, but when demand for the currency leads to a prices increasing,such as from an attempted corner, then you do not destroy price stability because the person operating the corner is buying the cash with something. The money-printing used to break a corner can in principle be small and you can even have an inflation target of zero and still print money to break such corners. What I want to emphasize with this though, is the source of a currency's value. The collateral of the debt of the loans denominated in it and the social and economic consequences to individuals of defaulting on loans in it. That is the end-source of demand for a currency, and that guaranteed demand is so great that it makes attempting to corner the market in the currency make sense. If you cornered the market in bitcoin, there's no one who would have to buy even one. That shows how little bitcoin is worth, i.e. zero.
- cwalv 2y ago
  Bitcoin really is different. It's a commodity rather than a security, and proof of work consensus is essential for its use case.
  - aoeusnth1 2y ago
    Dollars ultimately have value because the United States government collects taxes in dollars. Who demands Bitcoin, except speculators? It's value is entirely propped up by it's cultural expectation - meme value - with no tether to a real source of demand for BTC.
    - cwalv 2y ago
      Dollars are the currency Bitcoin is most commonly compared against, and for people who have easy access to USD it can be very hard to see how btc has utility. But if you compare to other things (e.g. commodities with a monetary premium, or fiat from a small country), it's much easier to comprehend. It is work to 'get' it tho. All the info is available; I can't make it easier to understand than many others out there already have.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Anyone who needs to conduct transactions without having their name attached to it, and cannot meet personally to use cash. Online black market purchases, say. You're not wrong that like 99.9% of BTC value is from speculation, but it does have its valid use cases.
    - crimsoneer 2y ago
      It really isn't about taxes, and more about trust and collective faith. The USD isn't backed by cold economic calculation, it's... a big dream we all agree to keep dreaming. And that's mostly fine.
- protocolture 2y ago
  I have heard every reasoning for regular currency to have more value over cryptos since 16/17 when I started paying attention. Gold Standard, Government Protection, Debt, Government credit instruments. But everything I read about currency tells me that its largely always just agreed upon make believe. The case with the Real absolutely confirmed that for me.
  - 7speter 2y ago
    Neither the rule of law nor following through on contracts and other obligations are imaginary
    - int_19h 2y ago
      And both equally apply to cryptocurrencies.
      - brookst 2y ago
        And now I have to clean coffee out of my keyboard. Thanks.
        int_19h 2y ago
        It's literally true, though. Cryptocurrency itself doesn't suddenly render contracts unenforceable or the ability to use courts etc to resolve conflicts. What hinders it is anonymity of the other party, but that's something that cryptocurrency merely enables; whether to engage with anonymous parties or not is still a choice. It does not preclude you from, say, suing Coinbase if they owe you some BTC. And, conversely, if you try to pay with cash to some shady people in a parking lot, there's not much good you're going to get out of courts if they defraud you.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Well... they both are. Just like currency. All of those were imaginary since they were invented. People have create physical representations for currency in particular, but that doesn't change the fact that it's only a group of people agreeing on something that only exist on their heads. Equally imaginary things are "corporations", "governments", "military"... If you push hard enough, even "person" fits that, but this one is deeply entrenched in people's minds.
- crimsoneer 2y ago
  I mean, if you have 1 mil usd + of eth or bitcoin, you have a pretty decent pile of cash that is vaguely stable (not massively different to gold), and that government cannot touch or (if you do a good job) even know about. From a personal perspective, that absolutely has value. From a public perspective, is the existence of that a good thing? Whole different kettle of fish (and then you're back on the whole "is end to end encryption bad" argument).
xrd 2y ago
I was excited about Cabbage Patch Kids, but I missed $TRUMP. Where is the $PUTIN token?
- xrd 2y ago
  In all honesty, I've read a bunch of positive articles about Millei, and watched the Friedman interview with him. He has multiple economics degrees and really seems to understand economics in a way that Trump does not, IMHO. And, so this is horribly embarassing that he does not understand the basics of cryptocurrencies and tokens and the scoundrels. Understanding economics is not the only point when you are running a country. You need to create a stable environment for citizens.
  - imiric 2y ago
    You don't seem to be considering the possibility that he knew perfectly well what he was doing, and that this was intentional. Rug pulls are popular among celebrities.
    - xrd 2y ago
      You are right, I assumed he was principled and dedicated to the good of the country above all else. Should I reconsider that? Like I said, I read positive things about him and thought was a sincere person. If you have something else I should read, I would be very interested to know what to add to my list. I've been following Argentina's struggles for a while given my time in Brazil and the parallels to hyperinflation so I was willing to consider his unorthodox approach, but perhaps it blinded me?
      - throwaway314155 2y ago
        [flagged]
        catlover76 2y ago
        He is talking about Argentinian President, not Trump
tombert 2y ago
Christ, why is it just ok for politicians to outright create and promote Ponzi and Pump 'n Dump schemes? It doesn't seem that long ago that this would have been a scandal but now with the moron in the Oval Office creating his own meme coins without even trying to hide his business interests, and now the president of Argentina is doing the same shit? Is this really the world that we want? I mean, I guess the answer is "yes", but I don't have to like it.
- dashundchen 2y ago
  Insane timeline. Jimmy Carter had to sell his unprofitable peanut farm to avoid the appearance of conflict of interests, but the current president did a shitcoin pump and dump and his supporters eat it up and ask him for more.
  - tombert 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - timy2shoes 2y ago
      A for-profit media company that foreign interests can pile money into for a quid pro quo, that’s somehow not legally a quid pro quo anymore.
      - pjc50 2y ago
        Meanwhile there's a quid pro quo to avoid prosecuting Eric Adams for bribery if he changes his policies. Absolute banana republic stuff.
        sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
        That one is such a clear, obvious case of corruption. I wish more people were screaming it from the rooftops. I've told a number of people about it IRL and it's shocking how few know. But I guess that's part of the "flood the zone" tactic of the fascists. For those who haven't been following along, here's the highlights. Adams did some corrupt shit, like really obviously corrupt. Foreign sources made gift offers. Advisors said "no, the mayor definitely doesn't want those gifts because that would be highly inappropriate and illegal." The mayor's office said "actually, we would love those gifts please continue!" All of this is well documented; yes, they took notes on a criminal conspiracy. Naturally, this resulted in criminal charges. Adams screams political persecution because that's what corrupt politicians do when they're caught. Trump takes office, and this creates an opportunity for further corruption. Adams and Trump make a deal. Adams will facilitate anything Trump wants to do in NYC vis a vis immigration (which may include tactics of questionable legality), Trump's DOJ will drop the charges. DOJ lawyers who were in the meetings discussing this arrangement were told not to take notes. Hm. Then DOJ leadership directs the lawyers assigned to the case to file a dismissal. They burn through 7 DOJ lawyers who resign rather than sign a dismissal. The dismissal was eventually signed by Emil Bove, who had been recently appointed to the #2 position in the DOJ by Trump. Bove's previous role was as one of Trump's criminal defense lawyers. Absolutely fucking corrupt.
raziel2701 2y ago
How come Milei, a master economist, go on to promote something he later said he didn't understand? This is the quality of leaders coming into power all over the world. Bunch of incompetent people (in the most charitable read of the situation) or bunch of grifters (in the least charitable read).
- catlover76 2y ago
  [dead]
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  Milei, a master economist? Great joke! Some reports indicate he gets paid to say things about products or companies, which has more credibility because he’s, you know, the president. And that’s what happened with this meme coin thing.
- Daishiman 2y ago
  He was never a master a master economist. This is a purposeful memetic disinformation campaign promoted by the owners of first-world mass media. He holds a degree from a third-rate private university. Private university is where you go to school in Argentina for when you don't have the chops for public university and need to go to a degree mill. His doctorate is from another bullshit institution made up by a rotting old landowning oligarch who holds prehistoric beliefs in just about everything.
droptablemain 2y ago
The Solana trenches are effectively a giant crime-riddled casino. Everyone who plays understands this -- you can make money but you're essentially gambling. I'm not saying this is OK, but it's the current state of things. When this $Libra token launched, everything else dumped as capital flowed into it, and then effectively got siphoned off by insiders. So even people that didn't chase "Argentina's coin" got screwed. Rinse, lather, repeat. There are some winners in this game, mostly insiders and cabals, but a whole bunch of losers. I would say something's gotta give, but the stark reality is that America's casinos are always jampacked with dream chasers.
- manquer 2y ago
  > you can make money but you're essentially gambling. It is much worse than that, legitimate gambling is fine. In meme coins everyone knows they are scamming and and it is a pump and dump but just think that there would be some dumb "bag holder".
  - quantified 2y ago
    Sort of like a casino version of musical chairs, but the there's no music.
  - maxbrt 2y ago
    I was at an (academic!) conference about Crypto recently with a friend. I am an outsider to the whole topic and wanted to "expand my horizon" and see if maybe my expectations of if it being mostly a scam were wrong. In one of the first talks we went to, the panel speaker mentioned that Trump pumping-and-dumping his memecoin was a good thing, because that more or less justifies their own position in doing so, and that it would maybe lower their legal fees in the future. This was followed by a big laugh from the audience. These people fully know what they are doing.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  I don't get the crime part for the most part. If you know the rules of the game and you willingly participate, then how is it different from any casino? I don't buy into any of the people that claim they were scammed, they knew the rules and they tried to make money out of nothing. Other than perhaps trading unregulated securities, I don't see the actual fraud. To be clear it is distinct from pretending to be a security for an actual productive company, that is actual fraud, but usually the coins are very transparent about having no underlying value.
dzhiurgis 2y ago
Someone sold 1.9% of coin (seems fair) and entire thing busted?
- adastra22 2y ago
  There's not a lot of depth propping these things up.
chinathrow 2y ago
Grifters all the way down.
aurareturn 2y ago
Crypto is the best way for poor people to part with their money.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dysoco 2y ago
Just to clarify, here are some important differences compared to the Trump case: 1. Milei did not sell this as a memecoin at all, unlike Trump, he sold it as a "financial instrument to help finance small Argentinan enterprises". 2. Trump tweeted about $TRUMP BEFORE stepping into office, Milei is already the president of Argentina. This constitutes an obvious ethical violation, and possibly a legal one as well. 3. 80% of the marketshare was concentrated in just 10 accounts, these accounts made transactions at 0-1 seconds after the president's tweet. There was some clear insider training here. Was Milei on this or was he just the victim of a scam? In either way he has pictures and met with the coin's creators 3-4 times as the record shows, so he cannot claim he knew nothing about this. I don't personally think he intended to be part of a scam, but it shows some clear incompetence and he cannot promote such things in his official account, scam or not. I hope this helps people from outside Argentina get another view of Javier Milei, I've read way too many uninformed comments here on Hacker News and other sites about how he's a genius in economy and he's helping Argentina's economy, and that cannot be further from the truth sadly. If he made such a blunder in finance which supposedly is one of his specialties just imagine how incompetent he and most of the government right now is on other matters.
- draxofavalon 2y ago
  Exactly, this was not a memecoin. Agree with your view about Javier Milei.
- wmf 2y ago
  he sold it as a "financial instrument to help finance small Argentinan enterprises" Is there any evidence that LIBRA can do that? If not it's even more scammy.
  - dysoco 2y ago
    Obviously it's just a memecoin, but that's what Milei's tweet said, he never mentioned "meme" in his tweet unlike Trump.
    - lavezzi 2y ago
merillecuz56 2y ago
[flagged]
ryandvm 2y ago
How quaint
courseofaction 2y ago
Has the media or world at large even noticed the $TRUMP scam? I've only heard of it through Voidzilla, is that reflective of my bubble or is 'flood the zone' working?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Not comparable, politically or financially Politically, Trump’s party controls the government and Trump is incredibly popular with his party. Financially, there hasn’t been a rug pull. The comparable situation would be Trumpcoin gets wiped out in 2026 amidst the Democrats taking back the House.
  - bbor 2y ago
    I mean... at a certain point, with memecoins, it's just about the scale of said pull, not the presence. There have been concerns of a pump and dump scheme and analysts have viewed it as a "disaster." A forensic analysis commissioned by the The New York Times concluded that 813,294 wallets lost $2 billion by trading the coin while the president's company and partners profited about $100 million from trading fees. According to Fortune, "Less than three weeks after its release, President Donald Trump’s memecoin has produced more losers than winners. For every dollar in trading fees the Trump crypto creators raked in, investors lost $20." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%24Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%24Trump I hope we can all agree, crypto-fans or no, that moon coins are at best a very risky, unregulated gambling prospect!
    - adriand 2y ago
      As was noted elsewhere (I forget the source), it's zero sum: anyone who makes money is making it off someone who is losing money. In fact, it's less than zero sum because of platform fees.
      - tombert 2y ago
        Yeah, this is the thing that made me realize that cryptocurrency is pretty much always a bad investment. Stocks aren't zero sum, at least in their idealized form; if I buy a share of some company, they can use that investment to create products or provide value in some form, and if the product is good then that gets reflected in the stock price increasing. It creates value, and the stock price follows. With cryptocurrency (with maybe the exception of the more computation based stuff like Ethereum?), it doesn't really do anything, it's not creating value. It's just transferring between wallets, and the value increase is pretty much entirely speculative. Obviously not all stocks are "ideal" like I mentioned above; there have been plenty of cases where stocks are ponzi-adjacent, and it's certainly not uncommon for stocks to be overvalued during bubbles and the like, but my point is that stocks aren't inherently zero-sum like cryptocurrency is.
bbor 2y ago
That's hilarious/interesting/terrifying, but my naive outsider understanding is that "risks impeachment" is just something opposition lawmaker Leandro Santoro said once, not, like, an impending problem. Anyone know anything more specific/to the contrary?
- polsaker 2y ago
  The opposition party doesn't have the numbers in Congress to even start the impeachment process. Regardless it's still a decent reputational hit for Milei
Aurornis 2y ago
> the company informed him about the Libra blockchain project and its aims to finance private ventures in the country. I can’t believe people are still falling for these claims. Every single time someone launches a coin with claims that purchasing it will help fund some special cause, there is no basis to the claim. If you want to fund or finance a cause, give your money to that cause. If you buy a meme coin, you’re only giving your money to insiders who held the coins before the pump.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  But of course the motivator wasn't actually to "finance private ventures", it was to rent seek and to speculate about making profit by being first to be in on the thing.
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's my character."
  - ourmandave 2y ago
    And the little bastard scorpion isn't actually sorry.
greenavocado 2y ago
This is a variant of a pig butchering scam. Pig butchering scams are a dime a dozen and screw over many who get so deep in the game they can't stop. Cryptocurrency 'pig butchering' scam wrecks Kansas bank, sends ex-CEO to prison for 24 years The massive embezzlement led to the collapse and FDIC takeover of Heartland Tri-State, one of only five U.S. banks that failed in 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/cryptocurrency-pig-butchering-scam-wrecks-kansas-bank-sends-ex-ceo-pri-rcna167642 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/cryptocurrenc...
- caminante 2y ago
  Wild story. This is more perverse than rugpulls (i.e., $libra). I'd blame the bank staff just as much as the CEO. No controls, signing off on wire transfers above material thresholds...I assume that Board and bank officers will get reamed for gross negligence and willful misconduct. Those can pierce liability caps and insurance.
shelled 2y ago
This reminded me of WorldCoin and it was sad to see it's still trading 0.01 above its all time low. I had expected it to go much much down further. My introduction to it was at a local mall here. A person just approached and me and I politely said "I don't want it" assuming it was the credit cards or donations and he chuckled and said "sir, it's not credit cards" but I kept moving and then he pointed me to that creepy looking shiny globe/round thing. The moment I saw "Sam Altman" mentioned on a print-out kept there, I couldn't run faster out of there. I later read about it and found out this time around the creepy bugger was out scanning everyone's iris. I think there are many types of scams after all. Good scam, bad scam, legit scam, illegitimate scam et cetera.
yalogin 2y ago
Crypto finally found a great use case then -- It's clearly scam artists and people exploiting their popularity to screw over regular people. There has been an implosion of those recently.
- 6510 2y ago
  In the future we could use it to measure real popularity by the value of their coin. side note: I've been thinking there should be a HN store where we can buy ingame cosmetics from all these points we've gathered.
TZubiri 2y ago
I seem to be in the minority here, and I would definitely be framed as a supporter for saying this, but I'm a nuanced person. He is more of an idiot than a scammer, legally I think the term is negligence instead of fraud. Having recognized that he caused damage by negligence, additionally I think he was a victim too, he was scammed out of political capital and reputation. I don't think he was in on it, although definitely someone near him definitely was, not necessarily a dev, but definitely someone with a "bag", holding it and speculating that it would go up, essentially utilizing their position for personal gain, which I think is a very classic form of corruption. It's not the minister of economy, it's not his modus operandi (Funds and offshore accounts), this has the markings of someone young. Whatever he got out of it, either by buying early and holding, or by founding it himself, he for sure lost of all of his political capital. I'll take a look at the specific contract, and addresses, I'm assuming it's a basic pump.fun thing, but there may be more to it.
- quantified 2y ago
  That level of idiocy for sure begs impeachment. But he's not an idiot if he arose to the presidency, he's got a lot of savvy about how things work and who does what. Definitely worth inspecting inside and out.
  - rob74 2y ago
    You don't need to be a genius to become president as a populist - you just need to get rid of any kind of morals (if you still had some at the outset).
    - Izikiel43 2y ago
      Yes, but you do need some kind of intelligence to last a year as a non peronist in Argentina and getting the economy to turn around and prevent a hyperinflation. Either way, this event is bad, he is either negligent or criminal, and the opposition has been looking for a motive to impeach him since he took power, I can't believe he gave it to them.
- levanten 2y ago
viraptor 2y ago
Coffeezilla has a really good interview about it https://youtu.be/EqizJTbxAEM https://youtu.be/EqizJTbxAEM
- miamibre 2y ago
  Listening to it now and it's so eye opening, these guys literally do NOT care about the project, all they care about is making money and using any advantages to get one up on the loser holding the bag. -"Every one of these memecoins serves to make insiders money, what am i supposed to do NOT launch the project?" -"This famous person lost $5 million so we made him whole and refunded to avoid any issues" -"These coins are just a casino" It's so funny that these guys are way more lucid and honest than most of the "investors" Edit: Oh man so this guy spends 40 minutes moaning how sniping and scams are rife in the Solana ecosystem but he himself sniped $MELANIA and claims "To not have made any money" which means nothing to me because I'm sure your bank account grew. Also looked him up and he has 0 experience in development, LA Based, and was an "entrepreneur" for 7 years before becoming the CEO of a Bitcoin consulting company. This guy is the stereotypical rug pull con artist.
ekkiren 2y ago
Yes, Milei is a amazing economist. Yes, Milei and his team are improving the Argentinian economy more than anyone could have ever imagined after a single year. Yes, Milei f*cked up incredibly and might be subject to legal consequences. All three are true at the same time. Don't mix things up.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jcarrano 2y ago
Let's see it another way: there's absolutely no way that in the 2-3 hours the post was up a person not familiar with the gamblecoin ecosystem could purchase $LIBRA, let alone pour thousands of dollars in. The people who lost money are all professional memecoin gamblers, and the ones who pocketed in are obviously connected to the project leaders. Cyptobros want to have unlimited freedom to trade whatever they want without regulation, which is fine for me, but then they shouldn't whine when/if they are rug-pulled. For all the outrage, I yet have to see a single person in Argentina produce a TXHASH that proves they put money on the project. This is not something you can just log in on Binance and buy with cash in a single click. Meanwhile, states operate their own lotteries and casinos (e.g. "Lotería de la Provincia") where the poor and hopeful go to pay a tax on their ignorance. Of course, the president and his advisors are responsible for not investigating enough and blindly trusting these so-called "businessmen". We'll see what the Law has to say about that, but I remind you that Argentina is a place where a vice-president tried to steal a company (look up Ciccone Calcográfica). Last, the 4.4B number looks huge, but that is just "market cap", i.e. valuation extrapolated to the total supply of tokens, and not the actual amount of money that went into the coin.
- mhmmmmmm 2y ago
  > This is not something you can just log in on Binance and buy with cash in a single click. You would've definitely been able to buy it with cash and a few clicks, for example using moonshot. (And I'm sure a couple other / similar platforms)
  - djtango 2y ago
    The point is the window to buy was 2-3 hours: you had to be ready to trade, and watching either charts or being on a discord or actively checking X and with cash in an account. People lost money but I doubt there was much collateral damage
    - guax 2y ago
      Though I agree that the damage will be limited I don't think it would be very concentrated on people paying attention. Considering notifications get pushed and heavy use of large group chats is common in south America does not take much for it to be promoted to laypeople by the more active followers of Javier. Older people particularly at risk given the excessive trust they give to people In position of power, knowledge of technology and readily available savings in USD on non savings accounts or investments.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nisalperi 2y ago
Truly the dumbest timeline
deleted 2y ago
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liendolucas 2y ago
Despite the known facts is absolutely shocking that an economist promotes a cryptocurrency (even worse: a "meme" one that was created minutes before his tweet), as is widely known that there's no value at all in there but pure speculation, that's what puzzles me the most. If people with little knowledge on economics know this how can't he? How can a president with an army of advisers let him publish something like that? Even if it was his very own mistake it is really unbelievable that people around him didn't know a thing on the matter, is just simply not possible. He really should stay away from the stupidity of social networks and do better for the country that is still going through hard times. In one occasion he also denied the climate change, possibly due to Trump's position, showing that he doesn't know a thing about certain topics. In such situations he should really shut up and get properly informed.
miamibre 2y ago
I'm sorry but anyone buying this story is clearly either A) A fool that hopes to rugpull someone in the future B) A fool who hasn't made a 5 second google search to how all these coins operate Either way I have yet to meet any "investor" that has made any money in these investments that couldn't have been made by just parking some cash in Bitcoin / Ether / DOGE if you really wanted to get a taste of cryto. It's a shame that as I watch more and more of these articles and investigations line up it's clear that there is such a demand to lose money from the populace that they will really turn a blind eye to when political leaders / oligarchs / techbros do it in hopes of being able to cobble together a get rich quick scheme like this. "It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe"
anacrolix 2y ago
This is why we can't have nice things.

Cryptocurrencies are volatile "investments".

Surely all cryptocurrencies are memecoins. There's very little debt in these things, so that it isn't a source of value, and there are many popular systems, from Bitcoin to Ethereum, so isn't any that can be said to be somehow special.

TrackerFF 2y ago
If Trump (or whoever) goes on social media to promote Bitcoin, it'll probably pump 5%-10%. And if it falls, it'll fall roughly back down to where it was. If he goes on to promote some unknown shitcoin, said coin could easily pump 1000%, and fall harder.
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  I don't get the point you're trying to make?
  - santoshalper 2y ago
    That legitimate stores of value are typically not that simple to manipulate.
    - hhh1111 2y ago
      [dead]
    - UncleEntity 2y ago
      Like real estate?
    - BobbyJo 2y ago
      You are equating legitimacy with liquidity, and the that isn't necessarily true. Liquidity is necessary, and a good marker, but not sufficient.
      - cwalv 2y ago
        > You are equating legitimacy with liquidity, and the that isn't necessarily true. How so? Liquidity is a measurement of how easy it is to trade, and if it's easy to trade there are many people/entities that believe it's "legitimate" currency, or they wouldn't trade for it
        BobbyJo 2y ago
        Parent said "store of value" not "currency". Liquidity is probably sufficient for a currency (depending on the features of the liquidity), but it is not sufficient for a store of value.
        cwalv 2y ago
        Fair enough; store of value additionally requires restricted supply so that the value isn't debased. But in the context of this thread, that just strengthens the argument that 'Bitcoin is different'.
        BobbyJo 2y ago
        It also requires a value proposition that doesn't depend on the current zeitgeist, among other things. Society changes, and stores of value need to exist outside that change, lest they be left behind with the norms and dogmas. This is where I personally think bitcoin fails.
        cwalv 2y ago
        > Society changes, and stores of value need to exist outside that change I completely agree. I don't think this is different from saying the store of value needs to stay liquid tho. Bitcoin is currently very illiquid compared to many things, but there's no reason to think it's liquidity will decrease, and based on trends and first principles of what makes something a good 'money', significant reason to believe liquidity will continue to increase
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  I don't even have a problem with some unwitting celebrity promoting this kind of stuff. They aren't subject matter experts and I imagine they have grifters targeting them all the time. What I do take issue with is this keeps happening because there's a lot of money to be made off transaction fees so nobody looks too hard into how fraudulent any of these memecoins are before allowing them on the trading platforms. Admittedly, I don't know how the trading system works so maybe the platforms taking a cut of the profits from the blatantly fraudulent activity are victims too? Crying all the way to the bank I suppose...
- dashundchen 2y ago
  He did a rugpull in a shitcoin right before his inauguration and likely pulled megaprofit out of some bag holders. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trumps-meme-coin-made-nearly-100-million-trading-fees-small-traders-lost-money-2025-02-03/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trumps-meme-coin-... Any other administration this would have been a huge scandal but when we're in an avalanche of corruption I guess it can be missed.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    I think the point was that it gave his supporters a quasi-legal way to donate money while skirting campaign finance regulation, making the trumpcoin itself not so much a unit of currency as a receipt - a proof of loyalty.
topranks 2y ago
Crypto adherents seem to have given up on any other narrative this time yeah. Scammers gonna scam. Suckers gonna lose (including the suckers who fancy themselves as scammers but don’t realise it’s a rigged game).
- EGreg 2y ago
  I am a “crypto adherent” who champions decentralized networks and byzantine-fault-tolerant protocols, and I have been using strongly pushing for the original narrative of trustless smart contracts cutting out the middleman. I think there are many use cases for it. Before you knock it, look at the following: https://intercoin.app/investors.pdf https://intercoin.app/investors.pdf https://intercoin.app/currencies.pdf https://intercoin.app/currencies.pdf Or if you want to see actual open source solutions, coded, see here: https://intercoin.org/applications https://intercoin.org/applications I know some people will knee-jerk downvote this. But actually look into the substance, first. TLDR: I have been speaking against “HODL” and zero-sum games just for “number go up” nonsense, and been building solutions for maximum utility.
  - XMPPwocky 2y ago
    I think your pitch would be significantly stronger if the resources you linked didn't largely revolve around "What if Snoop Dogg had his own currency?" I'm not ... completely unable to be persuaded that there are use cases for cryptocurrency. But "Ashton Kutcher should have Aston Kutchercoin, and develop some sort of referral-based pyramid-shaped scheme with it for his fans" is... what is that?
    - EGreg 2y ago
      That's... 1) A way to fill unsold seats at venues, and always have sold-out events 2) A way to reward his members for spreading his message and bringing more people 3) A way to turn his audience into an army of promoters 4) A way to be independent of banks, and accept global payments 5) A way to have a global online movement that becomes bigger than Ashton Kutcher himself... having subcommunities be empowered to get together and form their own meetups, see it happen around the world, if they get large then Ashton and his crew can come and do a rock concert there It's great for political campaigns and many movements as well. We did it for Yang's 2020 campaign for example, with "Yang Gangs", that was very early days in 2020
lmm 2y ago
The likes of Bitcoin or Ethereum aren't really "memes" in the modern sense, at least no more than any fiat currency is.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  Ordinary currencies have value due to the enormous debt in it. If people fail to obtain units of the currency, they default on obligations that have much greater value than the value of the all the cash in the currency. Thus in an ordinary currency the incentive isn't to ignore it, or to sell, but to hoard it so that people can't obtain the money to pay their loans in order to create a crisis so that they can obtain a large fraction of the value of collateral. This is prevented by central banks. If you try to execute this corner, you will drive up prices, so they will start printing money. So Bitcoin and Ethereum, both remain memes. Fiat currencies have non-mem value due to the debt.
  - csomar 2y ago
    Most people don't realize that governments can't just "print" currencies and the few that do (ie: Turkey, Argentina, etc...) have chronic hyperinflation. The US went a bit loose with supply and it already came back biting and still to this day struggling with the higher interest. The government does constantly devalue the currency, though. It does it at an imperceptible pace to not scare the chickens and make business viable. But that's the most they can collect from this system. Anything more and they blow the whole monetary system away.
    - impossiblefork 2y ago
      Yes, but when demand for the currency leads to a prices increasing,such as from an attempted corner, then you do not destroy price stability because the person operating the corner is buying the cash with something. The money-printing used to break a corner can in principle be small and you can even have an inflation target of zero and still print money to break such corners. What I want to emphasize with this though, is the source of a currency's value. The collateral of the debt of the loans denominated in it and the social and economic consequences to individuals of defaulting on loans in it. That is the end-source of demand for a currency, and that guaranteed demand is so great that it makes attempting to corner the market in the currency make sense. If you cornered the market in bitcoin, there's no one who would have to buy even one. That shows how little bitcoin is worth, i.e. zero.
cwalv 2y ago
Bitcoin really is different. It's a commodity rather than a security, and proof of work consensus is essential for its use case.
- aoeusnth1 2y ago
  Dollars ultimately have value because the United States government collects taxes in dollars. Who demands Bitcoin, except speculators? It's value is entirely propped up by it's cultural expectation - meme value - with no tether to a real source of demand for BTC.
  - cwalv 2y ago
    Dollars are the currency Bitcoin is most commonly compared against, and for people who have easy access to USD it can be very hard to see how btc has utility. But if you compare to other things (e.g. commodities with a monetary premium, or fiat from a small country), it's much easier to comprehend. It is work to 'get' it tho. All the info is available; I can't make it easier to understand than many others out there already have.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Anyone who needs to conduct transactions without having their name attached to it, and cannot meet personally to use cash. Online black market purchases, say. You're not wrong that like 99.9% of BTC value is from speculation, but it does have its valid use cases.
  - crimsoneer 2y ago
    It really isn't about taxes, and more about trust and collective faith. The USD isn't backed by cold economic calculation, it's... a big dream we all agree to keep dreaming. And that's mostly fine.
protocolture 2y ago
I have heard every reasoning for regular currency to have more value over cryptos since 16/17 when I started paying attention. Gold Standard, Government Protection, Debt, Government credit instruments. But everything I read about currency tells me that its largely always just agreed upon make believe. The case with the Real absolutely confirmed that for me.
- 7speter 2y ago
  Neither the rule of law nor following through on contracts and other obligations are imaginary
  - int_19h 2y ago
    And both equally apply to cryptocurrencies.
    - brookst 2y ago
      And now I have to clean coffee out of my keyboard. Thanks.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        It's literally true, though. Cryptocurrency itself doesn't suddenly render contracts unenforceable or the ability to use courts etc to resolve conflicts. What hinders it is anonymity of the other party, but that's something that cryptocurrency merely enables; whether to engage with anonymous parties or not is still a choice. It does not preclude you from, say, suing Coinbase if they owe you some BTC. And, conversely, if you try to pay with cash to some shady people in a parking lot, there's not much good you're going to get out of courts if they defraud you.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Well... they both are. Just like currency. All of those were imaginary since they were invented. People have create physical representations for currency in particular, but that doesn't change the fact that it's only a group of people agreeing on something that only exist on their heads. Equally imaginary things are "corporations", "governments", "military"... If you push hard enough, even "person" fits that, but this one is deeply entrenched in people's minds.
crimsoneer 2y ago
I mean, if you have 1 mil usd + of eth or bitcoin, you have a pretty decent pile of cash that is vaguely stable (not massively different to gold), and that government cannot touch or (if you do a good job) even know about. From a personal perspective, that absolutely has value. From a public perspective, is the existence of that a good thing? Whole different kettle of fish (and then you're back on the whole "is end to end encryption bad" argument).

xrd 2y ago

I was excited about Cabbage Patch Kids, but I missed $TRUMP. Where is the $PUTIN token?

xrd 2y ago
In all honesty, I've read a bunch of positive articles about Millei, and watched the Friedman interview with him. He has multiple economics degrees and really seems to understand economics in a way that Trump does not, IMHO. And, so this is horribly embarassing that he does not understand the basics of cryptocurrencies and tokens and the scoundrels. Understanding economics is not the only point when you are running a country. You need to create a stable environment for citizens.
- imiric 2y ago
  You don't seem to be considering the possibility that he knew perfectly well what he was doing, and that this was intentional. Rug pulls are popular among celebrities.
  - xrd 2y ago
    You are right, I assumed he was principled and dedicated to the good of the country above all else. Should I reconsider that? Like I said, I read positive things about him and thought was a sincere person. If you have something else I should read, I would be very interested to know what to add to my list. I've been following Argentina's struggles for a while given my time in Brazil and the parallels to hyperinflation so I was willing to consider his unorthodox approach, but perhaps it blinded me?
    - throwaway314155 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - catlover76 2y ago
        He is talking about Argentinian President, not Trump

tombert 2y ago

Christ, why is it just ok for politicians to outright create and promote Ponzi and Pump 'n Dump schemes? It doesn't seem that long ago that this would have been a scandal but now with the moron in the Oval Office creating his own meme coins without even trying to hide his business interests, and now the president of Argentina is doing the same shit? Is this really the world that we want? I mean, I guess the answer is "yes", but I don't have to like it.

dashundchen 2y ago
Insane timeline. Jimmy Carter had to sell his unprofitable peanut farm to avoid the appearance of conflict of interests, but the current president did a shitcoin pump and dump and his supporters eat it up and ask him for more.
- tombert 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - timy2shoes 2y ago
    A for-profit media company that foreign interests can pile money into for a quid pro quo, that’s somehow not legally a quid pro quo anymore.
    - pjc50 2y ago
      Meanwhile there's a quid pro quo to avoid prosecuting Eric Adams for bribery if he changes his policies. Absolute banana republic stuff.
      - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
        That one is such a clear, obvious case of corruption. I wish more people were screaming it from the rooftops. I've told a number of people about it IRL and it's shocking how few know. But I guess that's part of the "flood the zone" tactic of the fascists. For those who haven't been following along, here's the highlights. Adams did some corrupt shit, like really obviously corrupt. Foreign sources made gift offers. Advisors said "no, the mayor definitely doesn't want those gifts because that would be highly inappropriate and illegal." The mayor's office said "actually, we would love those gifts please continue!" All of this is well documented; yes, they took notes on a criminal conspiracy. Naturally, this resulted in criminal charges. Adams screams political persecution because that's what corrupt politicians do when they're caught. Trump takes office, and this creates an opportunity for further corruption. Adams and Trump make a deal. Adams will facilitate anything Trump wants to do in NYC vis a vis immigration (which may include tactics of questionable legality), Trump's DOJ will drop the charges. DOJ lawyers who were in the meetings discussing this arrangement were told not to take notes. Hm. Then DOJ leadership directs the lawyers assigned to the case to file a dismissal. They burn through 7 DOJ lawyers who resign rather than sign a dismissal. The dismissal was eventually signed by Emil Bove, who had been recently appointed to the #2 position in the DOJ by Trump. Bove's previous role was as one of Trump's criminal defense lawyers. Absolutely fucking corrupt.

raziel2701 2y ago

How come Milei, a master economist, go on to promote something he later said he didn't understand? This is the quality of leaders coming into power all over the world. Bunch of incompetent people (in the most charitable read of the situation) or bunch of grifters (in the least charitable read).

catlover76 2y ago
[dead]
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
Milei, a master economist? Great joke! Some reports indicate he gets paid to say things about products or companies, which has more credibility because he’s, you know, the president. And that’s what happened with this meme coin thing.
Daishiman 2y ago
He was never a master a master economist. This is a purposeful memetic disinformation campaign promoted by the owners of first-world mass media. He holds a degree from a third-rate private university. Private university is where you go to school in Argentina for when you don't have the chops for public university and need to go to a degree mill. His doctorate is from another bullshit institution made up by a rotting old landowning oligarch who holds prehistoric beliefs in just about everything.

droptablemain 2y ago

The Solana trenches are effectively a giant crime-riddled casino. Everyone who plays understands this -- you can make money but you're essentially gambling. I'm not saying this is OK, but it's the current state of things. When this $Libra token launched, everything else dumped as capital flowed into it, and then effectively got siphoned off by insiders. So even people that didn't chase "Argentina's coin" got screwed. Rinse, lather, repeat. There are some winners in this game, mostly insiders and cabals, but a whole bunch of losers. I would say something's gotta give, but the stark reality is that America's casinos are always jampacked with dream chasers.

manquer 2y ago
> you can make money but you're essentially gambling. It is much worse than that, legitimate gambling is fine. In meme coins everyone knows they are scamming and and it is a pump and dump but just think that there would be some dumb "bag holder".
- quantified 2y ago
  Sort of like a casino version of musical chairs, but the there's no music.
- maxbrt 2y ago
  I was at an (academic!) conference about Crypto recently with a friend. I am an outsider to the whole topic and wanted to "expand my horizon" and see if maybe my expectations of if it being mostly a scam were wrong. In one of the first talks we went to, the panel speaker mentioned that Trump pumping-and-dumping his memecoin was a good thing, because that more or less justifies their own position in doing so, and that it would maybe lower their legal fees in the future. This was followed by a big laugh from the audience. These people fully know what they are doing.
TZubiri 2y ago
I don't get the crime part for the most part. If you know the rules of the game and you willingly participate, then how is it different from any casino? I don't buy into any of the people that claim they were scammed, they knew the rules and they tried to make money out of nothing. Other than perhaps trading unregulated securities, I don't see the actual fraud. To be clear it is distinct from pretending to be a security for an actual productive company, that is actual fraud, but usually the coins are very transparent about having no underlying value.

dzhiurgis 2y ago

Someone sold 1.9% of coin (seems fair) and entire thing busted?

adastra22 2y ago
There's not a lot of depth propping these things up.

chinathrow 2y ago

Grifters all the way down.

aurareturn 2y ago

Crypto is the best way for poor people to part with their money.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dysoco 2y ago

Just to clarify, here are some important differences compared to the Trump case: 1. Milei did not sell this as a memecoin at all, unlike Trump, he sold it as a "financial instrument to help finance small Argentinan enterprises". 2. Trump tweeted about $TRUMP BEFORE stepping into office, Milei is already the president of Argentina. This constitutes an obvious ethical violation, and possibly a legal one as well. 3. 80% of the marketshare was concentrated in just 10 accounts, these accounts made transactions at 0-1 seconds after the president's tweet. There was some clear insider training here. Was Milei on this or was he just the victim of a scam? In either way he has pictures and met with the coin's creators 3-4 times as the record shows, so he cannot claim he knew nothing about this. I don't personally think he intended to be part of a scam, but it shows some clear incompetence and he cannot promote such things in his official account, scam or not. I hope this helps people from outside Argentina get another view of Javier Milei, I've read way too many uninformed comments here on Hacker News and other sites about how he's a genius in economy and he's helping Argentina's economy, and that cannot be further from the truth sadly. If he made such a blunder in finance which supposedly is one of his specialties just imagine how incompetent he and most of the government right now is on other matters.

draxofavalon 2y ago
Exactly, this was not a memecoin. Agree with your view about Javier Milei.
wmf 2y ago
he sold it as a "financial instrument to help finance small Argentinan enterprises" Is there any evidence that LIBRA can do that? If not it's even more scammy.
- dysoco 2y ago
  Obviously it's just a memecoin, but that's what Milei's tweet said, he never mentioned "meme" in his tweet unlike Trump.
  - lavezzi 2y ago

merillecuz56 2y ago

[flagged]

ryandvm 2y ago

How quaint

courseofaction 2y ago

Has the media or world at large even noticed the $TRUMP scam? I've only heard of it through Voidzilla, is that reflective of my bubble or is 'flood the zone' working?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Not comparable, politically or financially Politically, Trump’s party controls the government and Trump is incredibly popular with his party. Financially, there hasn’t been a rug pull. The comparable situation would be Trumpcoin gets wiped out in 2026 amidst the Democrats taking back the House.
- bbor 2y ago
  I mean... at a certain point, with memecoins, it's just about the scale of said pull, not the presence. There have been concerns of a pump and dump scheme and analysts have viewed it as a "disaster." A forensic analysis commissioned by the The New York Times concluded that 813,294 wallets lost $2 billion by trading the coin while the president's company and partners profited about $100 million from trading fees. According to Fortune, "Less than three weeks after its release, President Donald Trump’s memecoin has produced more losers than winners. For every dollar in trading fees the Trump crypto creators raked in, investors lost $20." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%24Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%24Trump I hope we can all agree, crypto-fans or no, that moon coins are at best a very risky, unregulated gambling prospect!
  - adriand 2y ago
    As was noted elsewhere (I forget the source), it's zero sum: anyone who makes money is making it off someone who is losing money. In fact, it's less than zero sum because of platform fees.
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah, this is the thing that made me realize that cryptocurrency is pretty much always a bad investment. Stocks aren't zero sum, at least in their idealized form; if I buy a share of some company, they can use that investment to create products or provide value in some form, and if the product is good then that gets reflected in the stock price increasing. It creates value, and the stock price follows. With cryptocurrency (with maybe the exception of the more computation based stuff like Ethereum?), it doesn't really do anything, it's not creating value. It's just transferring between wallets, and the value increase is pretty much entirely speculative. Obviously not all stocks are "ideal" like I mentioned above; there have been plenty of cases where stocks are ponzi-adjacent, and it's certainly not uncommon for stocks to be overvalued during bubbles and the like, but my point is that stocks aren't inherently zero-sum like cryptocurrency is.

bbor 2y ago

That's hilarious/interesting/terrifying, but my naive outsider understanding is that "risks impeachment" is just something opposition lawmaker Leandro Santoro said once, not, like, an impending problem. Anyone know anything more specific/to the contrary?

polsaker 2y ago
The opposition party doesn't have the numbers in Congress to even start the impeachment process. Regardless it's still a decent reputational hit for Milei

Aurornis 2y ago

> the company informed him about the Libra blockchain project and its aims to finance private ventures in the country. I can’t believe people are still falling for these claims. Every single time someone launches a coin with claims that purchasing it will help fund some special cause, there is no basis to the claim. If you want to fund or finance a cause, give your money to that cause. If you buy a meme coin, you’re only giving your money to insiders who held the coins before the pump.

TZubiri 2y ago
But of course the motivator wasn't actually to "finance private ventures", it was to rent seek and to speculate about making profit by being first to be in on the thing.
ImHereToVote 2y ago
The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's my character."
- ourmandave 2y ago
  And the little bastard scorpion isn't actually sorry.

greenavocado 2y ago

This is a variant of a pig butchering scam. Pig butchering scams are a dime a dozen and screw over many who get so deep in the game they can't stop. Cryptocurrency 'pig butchering' scam wrecks Kansas bank, sends ex-CEO to prison for 24 years The massive embezzlement led to the collapse and FDIC takeover of Heartland Tri-State, one of only five U.S. banks that failed in 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/cryptocurrency-pig-butchering-scam-wrecks-kansas-bank-sends-ex-ceo-pri-rcna167642 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/cryptocurrenc...

caminante 2y ago
Wild story. This is more perverse than rugpulls (i.e., $libra). I'd blame the bank staff just as much as the CEO. No controls, signing off on wire transfers above material thresholds...I assume that Board and bank officers will get reamed for gross negligence and willful misconduct. Those can pierce liability caps and insurance.

shelled 2y ago

This reminded me of WorldCoin and it was sad to see it's still trading 0.01 above its all time low. I had expected it to go much much down further. My introduction to it was at a local mall here. A person just approached and me and I politely said "I don't want it" assuming it was the credit cards or donations and he chuckled and said "sir, it's not credit cards" but I kept moving and then he pointed me to that creepy looking shiny globe/round thing. The moment I saw "Sam Altman" mentioned on a print-out kept there, I couldn't run faster out of there. I later read about it and found out this time around the creepy bugger was out scanning everyone's iris. I think there are many types of scams after all. Good scam, bad scam, legit scam, illegitimate scam et cetera.

yalogin 2y ago

Crypto finally found a great use case then -- It's clearly scam artists and people exploiting their popularity to screw over regular people. There has been an implosion of those recently.

6510 2y ago
In the future we could use it to measure real popularity by the value of their coin. side note: I've been thinking there should be a HN store where we can buy ingame cosmetics from all these points we've gathered.

TZubiri 2y ago

I seem to be in the minority here, and I would definitely be framed as a supporter for saying this, but I'm a nuanced person. He is more of an idiot than a scammer, legally I think the term is negligence instead of fraud. Having recognized that he caused damage by negligence, additionally I think he was a victim too, he was scammed out of political capital and reputation. I don't think he was in on it, although definitely someone near him definitely was, not necessarily a dev, but definitely someone with a "bag", holding it and speculating that it would go up, essentially utilizing their position for personal gain, which I think is a very classic form of corruption. It's not the minister of economy, it's not his modus operandi (Funds and offshore accounts), this has the markings of someone young. Whatever he got out of it, either by buying early and holding, or by founding it himself, he for sure lost of all of his political capital. I'll take a look at the specific contract, and addresses, I'm assuming it's a basic pump.fun thing, but there may be more to it.

quantified 2y ago
That level of idiocy for sure begs impeachment. But he's not an idiot if he arose to the presidency, he's got a lot of savvy about how things work and who does what. Definitely worth inspecting inside and out.
- rob74 2y ago
  You don't need to be a genius to become president as a populist - you just need to get rid of any kind of morals (if you still had some at the outset).
  - Izikiel43 2y ago
    Yes, but you do need some kind of intelligence to last a year as a non peronist in Argentina and getting the economy to turn around and prevent a hyperinflation. Either way, this event is bad, he is either negligent or criminal, and the opposition has been looking for a motive to impeach him since he took power, I can't believe he gave it to them.
levanten 2y ago

viraptor 2y ago

Coffeezilla has a really good interview about it https://youtu.be/EqizJTbxAEM https://youtu.be/EqizJTbxAEM

miamibre 2y ago
Listening to it now and it's so eye opening, these guys literally do NOT care about the project, all they care about is making money and using any advantages to get one up on the loser holding the bag. -"Every one of these memecoins serves to make insiders money, what am i supposed to do NOT launch the project?" -"This famous person lost $5 million so we made him whole and refunded to avoid any issues" -"These coins are just a casino" It's so funny that these guys are way more lucid and honest than most of the "investors" Edit: Oh man so this guy spends 40 minutes moaning how sniping and scams are rife in the Solana ecosystem but he himself sniped $MELANIA and claims "To not have made any money" which means nothing to me because I'm sure your bank account grew. Also looked him up and he has 0 experience in development, LA Based, and was an "entrepreneur" for 7 years before becoming the CEO of a Bitcoin consulting company. This guy is the stereotypical rug pull con artist.

ekkiren 2y ago

Yes, Milei is a amazing economist. Yes, Milei and his team are improving the Argentinian economy more than anyone could have ever imagined after a single year. Yes, Milei f*cked up incredibly and might be subject to legal consequences. All three are true at the same time. Don't mix things up.

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jcarrano 2y ago

Let's see it another way: there's absolutely no way that in the 2-3 hours the post was up a person not familiar with the gamblecoin ecosystem could purchase $LIBRA, let alone pour thousands of dollars in. The people who lost money are all professional memecoin gamblers, and the ones who pocketed in are obviously connected to the project leaders. Cyptobros want to have unlimited freedom to trade whatever they want without regulation, which is fine for me, but then they shouldn't whine when/if they are rug-pulled. For all the outrage, I yet have to see a single person in Argentina produce a TXHASH that proves they put money on the project. This is not something you can just log in on Binance and buy with cash in a single click. Meanwhile, states operate their own lotteries and casinos (e.g. "Lotería de la Provincia") where the poor and hopeful go to pay a tax on their ignorance. Of course, the president and his advisors are responsible for not investigating enough and blindly trusting these so-called "businessmen". We'll see what the Law has to say about that, but I remind you that Argentina is a place where a vice-president tried to steal a company (look up Ciccone Calcográfica). Last, the 4.4B number looks huge, but that is just "market cap", i.e. valuation extrapolated to the total supply of tokens, and not the actual amount of money that went into the coin.

mhmmmmmm 2y ago
> This is not something you can just log in on Binance and buy with cash in a single click. You would've definitely been able to buy it with cash and a few clicks, for example using moonshot. (And I'm sure a couple other / similar platforms)
- djtango 2y ago
  The point is the window to buy was 2-3 hours: you had to be ready to trade, and watching either charts or being on a discord or actively checking X and with cash in an account. People lost money but I doubt there was much collateral damage
  - guax 2y ago
    Though I agree that the damage will be limited I don't think it would be very concentrated on people paying attention. Considering notifications get pushed and heavy use of large group chats is common in south America does not take much for it to be promoted to laypeople by the more active followers of Javier. Older people particularly at risk given the excessive trust they give to people In position of power, knowledge of technology and readily available savings in USD on non savings accounts or investments.

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nisalperi 2y ago

Truly the dumbest timeline

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liendolucas 2y ago

Despite the known facts is absolutely shocking that an economist promotes a cryptocurrency (even worse: a "meme" one that was created minutes before his tweet), as is widely known that there's no value at all in there but pure speculation, that's what puzzles me the most. If people with little knowledge on economics know this how can't he? How can a president with an army of advisers let him publish something like that? Even if it was his very own mistake it is really unbelievable that people around him didn't know a thing on the matter, is just simply not possible. He really should stay away from the stupidity of social networks and do better for the country that is still going through hard times. In one occasion he also denied the climate change, possibly due to Trump's position, showing that he doesn't know a thing about certain topics. In such situations he should really shut up and get properly informed.

miamibre 2y ago

I'm sorry but anyone buying this story is clearly either A) A fool that hopes to rugpull someone in the future B) A fool who hasn't made a 5 second google search to how all these coins operate Either way I have yet to meet any "investor" that has made any money in these investments that couldn't have been made by just parking some cash in Bitcoin / Ether / DOGE if you really wanted to get a taste of cryto. It's a shame that as I watch more and more of these articles and investigations line up it's clear that there is such a demand to lose money from the populace that they will really turn a blind eye to when political leaders / oligarchs / techbros do it in hopes of being able to cobble together a get rich quick scheme like this. "It's a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club. And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe"

anacrolix 2y ago

This is why we can't have nice things.